The ezâfe is a short e vowel in Persian which joins a noun to a following word. It has three functions:
- Adjectival: mard-e-khub = 'good man'
- Apposition: mard-e-dustam = 'my friend, the man'
- Genitive: asb-e-mard = 'the man's horse'
Being a short vowel, it is not written at all in the Arabic script used for Persian.